The Innovation Diaries

Who says that progress needs to cost the earth? Park the thought of saving the planet for a moment and reflect on saving yourself the investment needed AFTER you have invested in a new innovation.
In an online New York Times article Eduardo Porter reported on the lure of the lights of Las Vegas. Mind [...]

Ever get stuck with a problem that seems insurmountable? Instead of trying to fix that precise part of the puzzle, why not take a step back and try solving it from a different angle?
“There is a classic case in which the tenants of a large office building complained about the increasingly poor elevator service. [...]

People don’t set out to make bad products. It’s a truism, but that doesn’t make it any less impactful. Over at Wired they have an inteview with Ted Castranova, a social scientist at Indiana University, on the pitfalls he encountered whilst trying to create a video game based on the works of Shakespeare (although as [...]

I was once told on a long airplane journey by a colleague that it pays to be patient and it pays to be bored. According to this colleague, he was convinced that for him, creativity lived in moments of boredom.
He told me that the best thing to do when feeling bored is to live with [...]

What do with an outmoded technology? Turn it into entertainment. A plethora of services using photo booths have sprung up here and in the US. In the UK, Boothnation offers customised booths for use at events (via DailyCandy), and what you see above was spotted by Jezebel at a recent wedding show.

Minnie and I are at the Great Place to Work Conference in St Louis this week and attended the opening Key Note session today. The speakers were Laszlo Bock, VP for People Operations at Google and Jack DePeters, SVP of Store Ops at Wegmans. Both have won the Best Place to Work in the USA.
Just [...]

I went to see Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, last night. It was a gathering advertised on his blog and, when someone is hailed as the ‘Indiana Jones of the digital age’, what girl could refuse the opportunity to meet such an iconic figure? I was in for an interesting night; dubbed [...]

We are very excited as this week we gained 12 new ?What If!ers, and we’ve started knocking down walls and baking cakes ready for their arrival! They come in the form of digital strategists and analysts from the agency Fathom Partners. The acquisition has happened and now the real partnership will begin as we join [...]

Social networking for the sick
“The members of PatientsLikeMe don’t just share their experiences anecdotally; they quantify them, breaking down their symptoms and treatments into hard data. They note what hurts, where and for how long. They list their drugs and dosages and score how well they alleviate their symptoms. All this gets compiled over time, [...]

Ever get that strange feeling that everyone is sharing the same collective thoughts as you? The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is the strange instance where a person learns something new (usually some obscure fact or addition to their lexicon) and have it related back to them shortly after hearing it for the first time. Many [...]